


Hide Nothing to Desire

by the_rck



Series: House of Sulfur and Mercury [12]
Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Genre: BDSM, Background Luke/Merlin, Body Modification, Burnplay, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Doppelganger, Established Relationship, M/M, Male Lactation, Omorashi, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rape Roleplay, Sex Toys, Sexual Roleplay, Shapeshifting, Voyeurism, main pairing is consensual - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-21 12:33:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13740963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: "You can treat it as a thought experiment,” I told Merlin. “Given certain imaginary circumstances, what would happen? What would you do? How would I respond?”He looked at me over the top of his bottle of beer. For a moment, he seemed about to ask me what the hell I was talking about, but then he nodded. “I couldn’t have killed you. Anyone else-- even my father-- I could.” His eyes narrowed. “No one else in the family realizes how fucking dangerous you are.”I laughed and raised my own bottle slightly. “Much safer that way.” I waved my free hand. “We don’t have to work out what to do with the rest of the family. You’ve dealt with them somehow and don’t have to worry about what they’re doing.” We both knew that that part was the purest fantasy, and I hoped that thinking about it would underline the fact that I was proposing a game.He smiled. “I could, you know. Now, at least.”“Do you want to?” I was very nearly certain that he didn’t, but part of me froze.He shook his head. “You just have to know that we’re playing with fire. You trust me more than I do.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Amy Lowell's "From One Who Stays."
> 
> This is in the branch of the series with "We Are Where We Began," so Luke and Merlin have children. They're mentioned and so is Luke, but they're not in the dark/smutty parts of the story. Luke's relationship with Merlin hasn't gotten any more consensual since "We Are Where We Began." An annotated list of the stories this arc can be found [here](https://somethingdarker.dreamwidth.org/36076.html) on DreamWidth.
> 
> The rape warning is for Martin and Merlin setting up a Shadow of Martin to be gang raped and for the two of them buying slaves with sexual intentions. Martin and Merlin are really into each other and what they're doing, but they're really pretty horrible to anyone they consider to be a Shadow dweller and so not properly 'real.' The gang rape is not particularly explicit, but what Martin and Merlin do while they're watching is very much so.
> 
> The characters fall in and out of the games they're playing, sometimes stopping for a real conversation. There's pretty certainly stuff I've neglected to tag for or to mention here, so please assume this map has territory labeled 'Here Be Dragons.'
> 
> I really have no clue how long this is going to get because it really is utterly plotless and won't have an ending as such.

I thought a lot more about what might have happened between me and Merlin if we’d ended up on opposing sides in a civil war. I’d said that we might have ended up like him and Luke, but I really think we wouldn’t have. Oh, certainly, one of the other of us would have ended up as a prisoner; I just think that the dynamics would have been very different.

If Merlin had captured me, before or after conquering Amber, I don’t think he’d have hurt me. I wouldn’t have betrayed him by siding with my father or by trying to hold Amber after my father’s death. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t have fucked me. I’m pretty sure he would have. It’s just that it would have had to be me making the first pass.

I probably would have, too, because it would be a form of power, a way of making sure that nothing got worse. It might also have led, if I played it right, to Merlin forgetting that I was a threat.

And that’s the point when I would have betrayed him. If he survived that and still had me prisoner-- or recaptured me-- then things would have gotten really bad.

If I’d captured him… I’d have given him a really nice prison, probably far too much like where Luke and Jasra had kept him. Then, I’d have avoided ever seeing him again because it would hurt too much. I’d have given him any comforts he wanted except freedom, except access to his powers.

I was never going to tell him that part. I think he needed to believe that anyone in the family would have reacted to Luke’s betrayals in the same way that Merlin had. That Merlin still did.

Then again, neither Merlin nor I had lied to the other about who we were. We hadn’t discussed Merlin wanting the throne or not because, at that point, either Oberon was going to survive or he was going to leave the whole mess to Corwin. Dad ending up running Amber had surprised everyone, so it wasn’t even a topic we’d avoided.

After Dad became King, I’d worried about what Merlin might do, but I’d also needed to deal with matters in Rebma. My grandmother had some idea of uniting the royal lines of Amber and Rebma and wanted me to help her pressure Aunt Llewella into having a daughter who I might marry. Then I had to learn diplomacy and a great deal about Amber’s trade routes. Gerard had offered me opportunities before, open ended offers for when I was ready, but I’d never liked the idea of being constrained that way.

As to Merlin… It was his first time off the leash. Well, he still had a leash of sorts because Caine was watching, because Flora was watching. It was more that he wasn’t caged any longer and that the leash was long enough to be scarcely noticeable. Really, he could have snapped it at any moment, if he’d wanted to.

I’d thought he would, even after I realized that he didn’t seem to want the throne. Actually because he didn’t seem to want the throne. He didn’t give a damn about Amber, and only a few family members bothered really getting to know him. They all talked to him, formed opinions, decided what use he could be, and then left it at that. I’m pretty sure that most of them expected him to disappear into Shadow.

Instead, he’d stayed on Shadow Earth most of the time. I don’t think Ghostwheel was even a flicker in anyone’s nightmares because no one else in the family was the sort of combination engineer and mad scientist that Merlin turned out to be. I’m pretty sure that several people would much rather he’d gone the more traditional family route and started a civil war.

At any rate, part of me wanted very badly to play at one of us being the other’s prisoner and at the other’s non-existent mercy. Something consensual and not at all like what I’d done to certain Shadow dwellers or like what Merlin had done to Luke. I wanted to know if either of us would enjoy yielding to the other that way. Well, more if I would. I didn’t want to be Luke, but I wanted Merlin to give me that kind of focused attention.

Merlin exerting his power was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.

Merlin might never be able to surrender to me, not voluntarily, not even with all the safeguards he had, but I trusted him, and I trusted Ghostwheel. For this, at least.

So I suggested it. I specifically talked about trying in both directions, just to see which was more fun.

“I can’t,” Merlin said. He didn’t even need to think about it.

I’d mostly wanted him to say it because that would mean looking at what it meant and why he felt that way, so I only nodded. “There are things I still can’t do,” I told him, meeting his eyes in an effort to show that I understood. 

It had taken almost a century for me to able to accept Trump contacts again. Even knowing who they came from only helped a little because there were only about three people I really trusted not to put a knife in me-- Llewella, Moire, and Vialle. Possibly Benedict might make a fourth, but that was only because he’d decided a long time ago that not wanting anything was safer. “I’m still interested. As I said, either direction would be hot. We just have to agree on some limits.”

I really wanted to touch him, but I knew that that would influence his decision in ways that might not be safe for either of us. I was almost certain that most of his hesitation was fear of me hurting him and fear of me no longer loving him. “As long as we both stop when one of us wants to, I don’t see a problem,” I told him. 

I saw it. I saw it all too well. We might both miss the point when we ought to stop.

The crookedness of his smile told me that he knew. He pushed up from the mattress on one elbow and looked down at me. “What we have is good now.”

It really was, so I smiled back at him. “It was just a fancy.”

He leaned down to kiss me, and I wrapped my arms around him.

*****

Merlin took three months to come back to the topic. I’d expected that it might take years, and it wasn’t something I had to have, so I’d let it lie.

“I don’t actually understand,” he told me one afternoon while we were sailing. “I mean why you’d want to play captor and prisoner and…” He shrugged, leaving ‘rapist and victim’ implied.

I took a moment to put my thoughts in order because, of all the things he might say right then, I hadn’t expected that. “Part of it is wondering about what-ifs.” I hesitated then added, “And both of us get off on using power, one way or another.” I wasn’t going to mention how much he still enjoyed his power over Luke. Merlin didn’t want to see that, didn’t want to remember that he still had it, and Luke wasn’t going to make him. I gave Merlin a sharp smile. “I think it might be challenging to see what I could manage when I only have my wits.”

He still didn’t understand. I could see that, so I shrugged. “As a game, it’s very different. There are rules we agree on. It’s not a constant thing, either, and--” I took a deep breath and added gently, “You’re not angry at me. You can play at being if you want, but you’re not. You won’t be.”

He looked out over the water. “Luke thought it was a game. He wanted it to be.”

I wasn’t going to tell him that Luke was an idiot-- or had been. Luke had been young enough to think that wanting very badly could make things so.

Merlin was fucked up enough over Luke that I really didn’t want him thinking about how young Luke still was.

And Luke had learned a hell of a lot about reality in the last decade. He knew perfectly well that his children were shields against Merlin. And against me. He loved them both, but agreeing to father them had certainly been a calculated decision even if both Luke and Merlin were quite clear that Merlin had asked Luke. I couldn’t imagine how Luke might have finessed that, but Luke was a hell of a lot better at manipulating Merlin than either of them thought he was.

“You never thought it was,” I told him. “If we both agree, then it is.” I dipped my fingers in the water then flicked droplets at him.

He flicked water back at me, and we didn’t say more on the subject until we were back on shore and drinking after dinner. 

“You can treat it as a thought experiment,” I told him. “Given certain imaginary circumstances, what would happen? What would you do? How would I respond?”

He looked at me over the top of his bottle of beer. For a moment, he seemed about to ask me what the hell I was talking about, but then he nodded. “I couldn’t have killed you. Anyone else-- even my father-- I could.” His eyes narrowed. “No one else in the family realizes how fucking dangerous you are.”

I laughed and raised my own bottle slightly. “Much safer that way.” I waved my free hand. “We don’t have to work out what to do with the rest of the family. You’ve dealt with them somehow and don’t have to worry about what they’re doing.” We both knew that that part was the purest fantasy, and I hoped that thinking about it would underline the fact that I was proposing a game.

He smiled. “I could, you know. Now, at least.”

“Do you want to?” I was very nearly certain that he didn’t, but part of me froze.

He shook his head. “You just have to know that we’re playing with fire. You trust me more than I do.”

I set down my bottle. “That’s not why I suggested it.” I didn’t bother sounding offended because I wasn’t. Given the shit that people had done to him, he needed to consider my motives. “I don’t think I could actually twist you so that I had more power over you than I already have just from--” I shrugged.

We both knew.

Kidnapping and holding Dalt for me was trivial, but it wasn’t something he’d have done for anyone else, barring his children, except for Luke. I didn’t think that Luke realized that Merlin would, and the poor bastard was likely too broken to be able to use it even if he did realize. All he actually wanted was for Merlin to be kind and for their children to be happy.

Luke wanted that last enough to have been willing to make peace with me.

“There is that.” Merlin tilted his bottle then lowered it with a frown and reached out a hand to summon a new bottle.

It never occurred to him that I might be bothered by proximity to his Logrus tendrils. If he’d thought about it, he’d have realized, but I’d learned to control that reaction years before we met. I’d spent a very, very long time in the Courts, and I knew parts of it that Merlin never would.

“If it had happened--” Merlin removed the lid from his bottle. “If it had, you’d have run circles around me, psychologically speaking, even if you were my prisoner.”

I didn’t see a point in denying it.

“I’d have known some of the levers to make you bend.” He looked a little distant. “Rebma, mostly.” He met my eyes. “You’re actually more vulnerable now. I couldn’t have threatened most of the people you gave a damn about. Me winning would have had to rest on Benedict, you know, so it would be Rebma and the people there.”

I wondered if he was really overlooking the other option.

He took a swig. “And Gerard.”

I laughed. “Yes, and Gerard. He was kind.” I let my eyes wander until I was looking at a corner of the ceiling. “Rebma would be enough, though.” I swallowed hard. At that point in my life, I’d likely have done a lot of stupid things to protect the people who raised me.

I might still.

“I wanted you then.” 

It was an unexpected admission. Not because I’d missed that he did but because I’d thought he hadn’t known.

I didn’t tell him that he’d been too young then for me to do anything but wait to see if he still felt that way much, much later. That would be too close to reminding him of how young Luke still was. “If you were ruthless enough for conquest, you’d have been ruthless enough to force me.” I tried not to let him see that my breath came a little faster as I said it.

He noticed anyway, and the grin he gave me showed fangs. “I want to. I more than want to.” Then he deflated. “I don’t want to risk--”

“Right now, it’s just words. Maybe that’s all it ever is. I’m pretty sure we can get each other really damned hard just talking about it.”

He laughed, and I joined him. Then we went and fucked until neither of us could get it up any more. Over the next three weeks, we teased each other with might have beens about what he’d have done to me and how I’d have let him and how I’d have tried to play him.

I don’t think that anyone who was paying attention would be surprised that I ended up kneeling, naked, in front of Merlin. My arms were bound with leather cords. I could break them with effort-- we’d tested that-- but Merlin had asked me to pretend that he’d used Frakir because he would have.

Frakir was effectively unbreakable.

Merlin had also asked me to take it as given that I’d spent days somewhere like the maze he’d used to break Luke’s resistance, and I’d agreed that actually doing it wouldn’t make the sex any better for either of us.

Merlin walked around me twice before settling in a chair. “You shouldn’t have fought me.”

I kept my face as blank as I could as I looked up at him. I said nothing.

He wrapped a hand in my hair and pulled just enough to hurt.

I wondered if it was that his judgment was that fine or if it was that that would have hurt Luke more than it hurt me. I pulled back my upper lip to bare my teeth.

His fist hit my cheek hard enough to raise a bruise. His other hand in my hair kept me from riding the blow to limit the damage. “Are you going to be stupid?”

I closed my eyes. “Does it matter?”

He ran his thumb over the cheek he’d struck. “I want you,” he said very softly. “You, not just your body. If you’d stood with me… Well, you didn’t.” He tipped my head upward and bent to brush his lips across mine. “I mainly started this way so you’d know. If I’ll do this to you… Well, what do you think I’ll do to people I don’t give a damn about?”

The ice in his voice and the heat of his obvious lust seemed to fill my veins, and for a moment, I was actually terrified. Then I made myself straighten my spine. “Threats won’t make me love you.” I made it a flat statement.

“Do you actually think that matters?” He shoved me onto my back and was on top of me before I caught my breath. The thing forcing its way into my ass felt too thick and too long to be his cock. It hurt like hell, and I writhed in an effort to escape. I’m not even sure what noises I made.

Once he was fully seated, he stopped and looked down at me.

I made myself go still and tried to make my breathing even again.

He smiled. He ran a hand over my bruised cheek. “I wondered what you’d look like when I split you open.”

I shuddered as I wondered how much of himself he could shapeshift to get inside of me. I hadn’t thought I could get harder, but I did. “Merlin--” I lost my ability to speak when he started moving. I gasped and tried one more time to escape, but he had me well and truly pinned. I started sobbing as his hand worked my cock.

He broke character enough to grin at me when I came in under fifteen seconds.

I don’t think I’d have asked him to stop, but right then, I’d forgotten that I could. I was certain that he knew both exactly how helpless I felt and how much he was hurting me.

He stayed inside me after he came and kissed me and caressed me until he was ready to start fucking me again. He didn’t let me come that time.

I wanted to, desperately, but he wouldn’t let me, not even when I started begging.

The third time he fucked me, he made me keep my eyes on my belly to watch the bulge created by his cock. He moved very slowly that time, giving me more than ample opportunity for horrified wonder at the sheer size of him. He talked the whole time about wanting to take me out into Shadow so that he could have me gang raped.

I knew he wouldn’t, but the thought of it happening to fantasy Martin brought me to my second orgasm.

After he finally came, Merlin whipped me for daring to come without him having wanted me to.

That hurt more than anything else he'd done. At that point, I knew I could ask him to stop, but he hadn’t done anything that I hadn’t said was okay, and I wasn’t going to admit that I couldn’t handle a bit of pain.

I think Merlin knew anyway because he was gentle after and gave me food and water and something for the pain. Then he just held me, offering comfort. I’m not sure how much time passed like that before he said, “Is that enough, Martin?”

I pressed my face into his shoulder and gave myself a bit of time to consider that. “For today,” I said at last. I wanted very badly to prove that I could take more, but I knew that, if I tried and was wrong, Merlin wouldn’t trust me on the subject again.

“You’re not competing,” Merlin said. “Luke endured everything because he didn’t have a choice. You don’t actually need to be him.”

I had really hoped that Merlin hadn’t noticed. “I was right-- It was incredibly hot.”

Merlin’s laughter was almost inaudible. “Tell me that again in a few days.” Neither of us said anything for a while. Then he added, “I don’t think pain is what you’re after. I don’t think either… Well, what you want would take more than an afternoon of play. You want to be helpless, to have me take away everything except you. I don’t actually know how to do that. I know how to take everything including you, but…”

Yes. If he knew how to take everything but me, he’d still have Rinaldo, son of Brand, giving him grudging cooperation mixed with defiance rather than Luke who had taken years to learn not to flinch when Merlin frowned.

“I don’t need that,” I told him. “The threats-- I hurt enough to almost believe you would but not enough to break the fantasy.”

“I think you actually might like the maze. Not everything, just the not knowing when I was coming or what shape I’d be in.”

I couldn’t tell if he would enjoy it. “Would you even want to?”

“You’d be worthwhile prey.” He bared his teeth, and I saw that he still had fangs. “I’ve hunted others there. Since Luke, I mean. Nothing nearly as challenging as you would be. I’m getting better about judging durability, but…” He sighed. “I keep going back to Shadows of Luke. They’re never right, but if I can keep them from talking, I can pretend.”

I thought about asking how many of them he’d killed and how often it had been deliberate, but I didn’t think either of us wanted to go into details about the notches on our bedposts. If Merlin didn’t know about mine already, it was entirely because he didn’t want to. I hated the idea that there wasn’t anywhere left in Shadow that was private, but even if Ghostwheel wasn’t tracking me-- and I was certain he was-- Ariyus was everywhere. Him realizing that he knew something might take a very, very long time, but it all churned to the surface eventually.

I have no idea how Merlin managed to make Ariyus stable. Most minds would fall to dust in the face of that much input, and Ariyus was older than Beren.

Rather than pursue that, I said, “I’m pretty sure Dalt could take anything either of us could dish out.”

Merlin’s inhalation through clenched teeth was quite audible. After a moment, he said, “I won’t stop you if you want to, but… I’m not even sure I can explain. He’s an asshole, but he’s never done anything to me or mine.”

Which was probably why Merlin kept going back to Shadows of Luke.

I shrugged then winced as the movement pulled on my torn back. “I don’t care one way or another. I enjoyed sharing a plaything the once, and Dalt’s available.”

“We’ll find something else in a few days,” Merlin promised. “There’s a… market that House Sawall uses for finding obscure specialties to meet sudden needs. I haven’t bought there, not personally, but they also sell sex slaves for all tastes. Very discrete.” He laughed and bared his teeth at me again. “I expect we could find someone who looks like you.”

That seemed perverted, even by my current standards, but the thought of what Merlin might do to a me that wasn’t me had me half hard already. Then Merlin gave me the most spectacular blow job ever. That really sealed the deal.


	2. Chapter 2

We ended up not buying Shadows of me at the market because it occurred to me, once I wasn’t out of my mind with lust, that someone might notice. My physical appearance is not unknown in places connected to hubs of power. 

We bought some other things there and went looking for Shadows of me elsewhere. Merlin was much pickier than I would have been. He had ethics about it which struck me as really weird given what we intended to do with the Shadow.

I supposed that Merlin having ethics was all that had saved the rest of us from his children, but I didn’t want to think too much about that because it would mean needing to encourage Merlin to have more qualms about something I expected both of us to enjoy. I told myself that it was probably already way too late for that anyway.

I’m really sure those grapes were sour.

We ended up with two Shadows, one for private pleasure later and one that we staked out for public use in a place that was the barest wisp of a reality and that I’m pretty sure didn’t exist either before or after we visited. 

Merlin kept us invisible while we watched the poor bastard get raped repeatedly. Merlin bound my wrists and fucked me while the Shadow was getting fucked. Merlin kept up a running commentary about how helpless I was, about how I wanted cock after cock, how I deserved any violence done to me. It was the most amazing thing that we’d ever done, and he wouldn’t let me come. He gave me some sort of drug that would let me get aroused but wouldn’t let me get all the way to satisfaction.

He said that me coming would spoil the whole experience.

He was right. That part was horrible, but it ground into me a sense that I actually was helplessly enjoying the abuse. I begged almost as much as the Shadow did, just for different things. I got no more mercy than he did.

When Merlin was beyond fucking me any more, he used a magical toy to keep pounding my ass. I have no idea how long it actually lasted, but eventually, Merlin stood and stretched and left me getting fucked by the dildo while he went to collect the Shadow of me. 

“We might want him again someday,” he told me.

I could only whimper in response.

After he’d tidied the Shadow away to wherever he stored such things, Merlin said, “I expect you want to come.”

I couldn’t remember ever wanting anything quite that much, so I nodded desperately.

Merlin shook his head. “You think you deserve it?”

His tone told me the right answer, but I couldn’t-- I really, really couldn’t. “Please, Merlin--” I wanted release so very badly that I could barely get the words out.

“I wonder how much longer you can bear it.” He crouched beside me and watched.

“Please, Merlin--” I couldn’t bear it, not even for him.

“No.”

That moment of absolute powerlessness in the face of denial snapped my control, and I howled. My brain seized and then released in something that felt almost like orgasm but that didn’t relieve my physical need. Apart from my desperate cock, my body went limp. Even sobbing was too much effort.

I barely noticed as Merlin stopped the dildo, untied me, and carried me back to his Ways. He washed me. He gave me water. Then he held me as the last of whatever the hell had just happened passed into exhausted sleep.

When I woke some time later, he was still holding me. His eyes were fixed on my face, and I wondered how long it had been and if he’d been staring at me the whole time. “Good?” he asked.

I didn’t want to find words, so I just nodded.

He smiled and nodded in return.

*****

The maze didn’t seem as terrible to me as it had obviously been in Luke’s memory, but I had things he hadn’t-- clean water, recent sleep, and the knowledge that I could get out if I changed my mind. I was naked, though, and it was cold and dark. I had taken Merlin’s suggestion that I fast.

Merlin had also let me see the place in advance with full light, so I knew there weren’t holes I might fall into, no points when the ceiling lowered enough for me to bash in my head. Luke can’t have known that, either.

It was just hard to remember that in the cold and the dark. Every small sound echoed through the stone corridors, and there were enough of those to keep my adrenaline up because I knew that Merlin was coming. He wasn’t likely to make me wait all that long, just long enough to worry that he’d never come.

When Merlin showed up, he was nearly silent. He dropped on me from the ceiling, all of his weight hitting my shoulders and back at once. Then he stretched and flattened and enveloped my head so that I couldn’t breathe.

I clawed at him and tried to pry him off me.

He wrapped himself around my arms and pinned them.

If I hadn’t spent the last three days without food, I’m not sure he could have held me. At that point, I knew, he’d have drugged me. We’d talked about the possibility.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t fighting as hard as I could.

I have no idea what form Merlin took, but I ended up with him in my mouth and my ass at the same time. My skin burned where he touched me. Every time I started to struggle, he cut off my air until I stilled. Sometimes, he cut off my air just because he wanted to. I could tell, from the way he moved in my throat, that he was getting pleasure from the contact between his flesh and mine.

I gagged and choked but couldn’t expel him from my throat. I felt as if he was pushing all the way down my esophagus. At that point, I really wasn’t noticing that he was fucking my ass as well.

When he left me, my whole body hurt. My ass felt like whatever had fucked me had been the size of my fist. I wasn’t sure if what was dripping out of me was blood or some sort of fluid Merlin had left behind. I couldn’t see to be sure, but I thought I had burns-- not bad ones but still burns-- on my back, chest, and arms.

I don’t think it was more than ten minutes before I managed to force myself to my feet. I needed water. The thought of adding anything to what Merlin had left in my stomach produced a roiling nausea, but water might soothe my throat at least a little.

Finding water took a while. I knew that little fountains existed. I knew that they’d make noise when I got close enough, but sounds echoed in that place so that using that to figure out where to go next was harder than I’d thought it would be. I hurt a little less by the time I bent to drink. The water didn’t help my throat or melt the leaden lump in my belly.

Merlin had said that there were things that worked better as surprises, as possibilities that might or might not become real. He’d stroked my face and kissed me. “It won’t be anything too terrible. I promise you that much.” Then he’d laughed. “And I want to touch you and fuck you. I’m not interested in enjoying a drink while I watch you scream. I’m not interested in you wandering around and talking to hallucinations.” He’d studied my face. “You’re… curious, aren’t you?”

“Anything once,” I’d said. It wasn’t so much that I wanted the pain as that I wanted know how it would feel, deep in my psyche, if I gave him that power and he used it. I knew how it felt when I took power from people who had no hope of stopping me. I enjoyed the hell out of that. I knew how it felt to experience a sharp, unexpected moment of betrayal that led to agony. I still had nightmares about that. I just didn’t know how to surrender to someone I loved. I’d done it a bit with Merlin, and that had shown me that it was a mental state that I needed every bit as much as I needed pleasant, consensual sex and as I needed the rape and torture that made me a monster. Maybe I only wanted that last. Maybe.

I was Blood of Amber. There was little I wanted that I couldn’t have.

After I drank, I stayed near the fountain for a while. Then I washed a bit. The way my skin reacted to having icy water splashed on it told me that I was actually burned. There wasn’t any blistering, fortunately.

Getting up again after that was harder than it had been after Merlin’s attack, but it was so cold that sitting still on the stone floor was draining my energy more than keeping moving would. 

I wasn’t sure how much time I had before he came back. He’d said not less than an hour and not more than four, but I had no way of measuring the passage of time. I kept one hand on a wall and followed that when it turned. I knew that none of the passages went anywhere; the maze wasn’t about destination. I knew, also, that Merlin could make the walls move so that memorizing the layout wasn’t going to help.

I felt as if I’d been in there forever, as if I would be in there forever. I knew neither were true. I knew that a few spoken words would get me out, back to warmth, light, and food. I pushed that thought away because knowing it kept me from feeling as physically vulnerable as I wanted to be.

Then I started hearing the sound of hard shoes on the stone. I couldn’t tell if they were ahead of me or behind me, and I didn’t dare run because it was sure to end with my face hitting a wall, but I desperately wanted to.

The footsteps got closer. I came to a point when the wall I was following turned sharply. I hesitated then stepped sideways four times to find the opposite wall. That turned, too, in another direction, so I followed it instead. Maybe that would buy me a few minutes. I wasn’t going to escape. I couldn’t. That was the point.

I’m not sure how long Merlin took to find me, but he caught me in a dead end passage. He might have made a dead end by changing the walls; I might simply have gotten unlucky. I heard him getting closer, and I pressed my back against the wall that had stopped me and desperately hoped he’d pass by.

He didn’t, of course.

I got to hear him coming closer, first the shoes on stone, then him breathing. I was breathing hard. He wasn’t. I almost hated him for that.

Then he stopped moving and said, “You look thoroughly fucked up.” He laughed. “I expect you’ll look worse by the time I’m done.”

I probably did. I probably would. I didn’t say anything in response.

“No persuasion? No pleading?”

I shook my head.

This time, he was human, more or less. His cock was still too big, and he still really enjoyed me choking and trying to scream as he forced it into my mouth and down my already raw throat. 

I struggled for breath, but I didn’t really fight this time. I was pretty sure that, if I did, what happened after would be worse. I know I cried because he mocked me for it.

Eventually, he had me with my face pressed to the floor and my ass in the air. He parted my cheeks and pressed finger into my ass. “Good,” he said. “I gave you enough time. It’s no fun if you’re too loose to feel it.”

I sobbed once then forced myself still.

He slapped my ass. It hurt enough that I thought it might be something near his full strength. “No,” he said. “I want that. We’re going to keep at this until even the smallest fragments of your self-control evaporate.” He used one hand to hold me in place and hit my ass with the other until the pain from that filled my awareness.

There were other times, before and after, when Merlin spanked me with the intention of arousing me or teasing me or just adding a little extra sensation to what we were doing. This wasn’t that. This was punishment and an assertion of his power over me.

I tried very hard to escape, but the hand he pressed into my back was impossible to dislodge or to slide away from.

He paused for a moment. “Be still.” He somehow managed a snap of command with a twist of utter disdain. “If you try one more time to escape, I’ll alter the punishment to something you’ll like even less.”

I froze. My mind went blank at the idea of worse, but I believed him. I stayed as still as I could, apart from shuddering and sobbing, as Merlin beat me.

When he finished that, he made me sit back on my heels, putting pressure on my bruised ass, while he played with my nipples. 

That felt weirdly good as he pinched and pulled. Then I felt liquid on my chest.

“Very nice!” Merlin said as if I’d done something that pleased him. “I wasn’t sure it would work this fast.” He put his mouth to one of my nipples and sucked on it until he had enough in his mouth to start working it between his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

I didn’t say anything, didn’t try to protest. My mind took longer to catch up to what was happening than it should have.

He pulled off and pinched the other nipple with his fingers, rolling it gently. “I think I like you like this. If I do it right, you’ll be desperate for milking, desperate for this--” His fingers worked to make something I didn’t want to admit was milk dribble out of my nipple. “Proper tits are completely optional for this part.” He laughed. “Though you’d look interesting with those.”

I choked on a protest.

He could. I’d surrendered myself to him.

I sobbed.

He kept milking me, sometimes with his hands, sometimes with his mouth. He explained that, the more milk he took now, the more my body would produce in expectation of later need.

At least it didn’t hurt. I don’t know how long he kept doing that. I don’t know how long anything there in the dark actually took, but that was the point when I really understood he was going to push me to unexpected places. He’d seen early that it was helplessness and humiliation I craved. Pain could certainly serve that, but his preference was to find other approaches.

When he fucked me, it did hurt, but that was almost a relief. I had some idea what to expect from his cock in my ass.

He talked again about the shame I’d feel at being splayed, naked, for public use by anyone who passed, about how my asshole would look after an hour or two of constant fucking, about how I’d be desperate for water and only get another cock in my throat. He mentioned that some men might not want to wait their turns and would simply masturbate until they came on my body and that some might want to see what happened with more than one cock in a hole or with something other than a cock. “Maybe a fist. Maybe a glass bottle. Maybe just a big rock off the ground or a tree branch that will leave splinters.” He traced a finger along my spine. “All of that happens when you’re getting near to useless for the only thing you’re meant for.”

I shuddered. I was hard enough to be desperate, but Merlin’s hands hadn’t gone anywhere near my cock. The possibility-- near certainty-- that he’d punish me for seeking relief kept me still but for the things he clearly wanted.

I had a pretty good idea of how the things he described would look from having watched my Shadow gangraped. The feel like part was still imagination because the only one touching me then had been Merlin, but my imagination for it was pretty damned vivid.

I had hated it but also couldn’t remember anything that had ever aroused me anywhere near as much. Maybe next time, Merlin would let me orgasm. Maybe some time, I really would be the one getting fucked by all comers.

Merlin went silent as he got near to his climax. Once he’d finished, he squeezed my ass hard enough that I whined in pain and had to fight not to pull away. He laughed. “You’re adorable and so very well suited to being my toy.” He leaned down and whispered in my ear. “I’ll shape you, oh, so carefully.”

I made a sound of almost panic, and he stroked my back for several seconds. Then he said, “You doing okay in there?” 

The words were so clearly Merlin my lover rather than Merlin the monster-- as if there were two Merlins and two or even three Martins-- that I forced my brain to work. Was I okay? I took several seconds before I answered, “All green.” My voice cracked, but the words were clearly audible. I took a couple of deep breaths and waited for him to start in again.

He just kept stroking my back. When he spoke again, he sounded thoughtful. “There are a lot of things about being a… toy that you won’t like.” It was both an offer of an escape, a going back to how things had been before, and an offer of a path forward. “You’ll have a small space, no bigger than what I gave Luke. If I do something you don’t like, you’ll accept it because you gave me that right. You won’t be able to indulge the other side of yourself, possibly for very long stretches of time.” 

He went silent for a while then sighed. “It’s not the same thing.”

I knew he was referring to this in contrast to what he had done to and with Luke.

“You’re giving me a gift and asking for one in return.” He sounded a little awed. “Luke… Well.”

I thought I understood what had happened to Luke with more clarity than Merlin ever would or ever might want to. I wanted time to think about what Merlin was offering and about whether or not it was worth the risk of him never letting me go. I pushed up against his hand. It wasn’t an effort to throw him off or to escape, more an acknowledgement that I was there, that I had heard.

Then I went still and waited.

He fucked me again, very slowly this time, with his hands moving all over my body, pressing on bruises and burns, squeezing my breasts to make them drip milk, even-- once in a very great while-- brushing my cock with a gentle pressure that was never quite enough.

When I tried to thrust against his hand and started begging, both of his hands started working my nipples, and after a moment, I could feel his cock growing thicker and longer inside me. His fingers still felt human, but I couldn’t see at all, so I had no idea if the rest of him still was.

“I’m curious,” he said, “how much of me can fit inside you before you can’t bear it.”

I was certain that my belly was starting to swell. I wasn’t sure I wanted this; I wasn’t sure I didn’t. I whimpered, but I didn’t ask him to stop.

He finally did anyway when we reached a point that had me panting with pain.

My face was still pressed to the floor, so I think he hadn’t noticed when the tears started.

He reached down and pulled me up against his chest. That felt rough and bristly in a way that wasn’t his normal, human hair. One of his hands cupped my belly and squeezed lightly.

That was enough to break my control so that my body started trying to force him out. I couldn’t of course, and the failed effort pulled on muscles that were already overstretched. I screamed until the spasms stopped.

We stayed like that for quite a long time, me hoping desperately for him to be satisfied, and him seeing which stimuli would make me scream again. He told me that my screams were beautiful and that my tears worth more than either Pattern. He told me that he loved being able to change my body so that I couldn’t deny that it was for his pleasure and not mine.

Then he got me off which was exquisite pleasure, immense relief, and pain beyond anything else he’d done in the preceding hours. Then he did it again. Three more times.

At that point, I started pleading. I have no idea what I said, but it made him laugh.

Then the parts of him inside me started to undulate, and I lost all ability think or to do anything but experience the physical sensations. I remember him panting, and I think he orgasmed again at least once.

At some point after that, I passed out. When I woke, I was still in the maze. I was next to one of the fountains which was good because I’d never have made it there if it had been any farther. I was exhausted, and everything hurt.

There was a strip of cloth wrapping my chest that I couldn’t loosen or tear, and I desperately needed to get rid of it in order to squeeze my nipples to release the milk that was building up. I thought, as I ran a hand over that part of my chest, that I felt swelling as if I was actually growing the tits Merlin had mentioned.

I knew Merlin would come at least once more because we’d said at least three times but not more than five. I wasn’t sure that my body could endure it, not after the first two encounters, and I wished desperately for food.

Then I remembered that that part actually was within my control. “Ghostwheel?” My voice came out as the barest whisper.

It didn’t matter. He appeared as a tiny circle of light, too bright for my eyes to bear. “Is this red, Martin?”

I considered that. “Yellow,” I said at last. I wasn’t absolutely sure I was right, but I still wanted to try. “I need to eat something and to sleep a while. After that…” I shrugged. I might be able to go on. I might not.

Ghostwheel gave me food in small quantities over some lengthy amount of time. He loosened the binding on my chest and told me that it was up to me whether I wanted to express the milk or leave it and hope that the whole thing would stop. Merlin had been so utterly into it that I decided to go with it.

Ghostwheel gave me a sleeping bag, too, that helped immensely with the cold. I slept, roused to eat and drink and squeeze milk out of my nipples, and then slept again, repeatedly. At least once, I woke with the sense that Merlin had been there. I don’t know that he was, but I’d have sworn I smelled power in the air.

I didn’t actually want to get to the point where I was fully rested and recovered. I just needed a respite. I knew Merlin well enough to be sure that he’d find a way to drive me to where I’d been before. If he wanted to take me past it, I probably wouldn’t even try to stop him.

Still, pulling myself out of that sleeping bag for the last time, saying, “Green,” and walking away from that tiny, dark oasis of comfort was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. The air around me felt colder than it had, and I shivered constantly.

Then Merlin was there. I could hear him, but he didn’t touch me. “Not here for long,” he said. “You left something behind. Raise your arms.”

I hesitated for a fraction of a second, but I did it. I wasn’t entirely surprised to feel that band of cloth wrapping around my chest. It felt tighter this time.

Then Merlin kissed me, caressed my cock, and vanished.

Nothing happened for a long while except that I kept one hand on the wall as I walked. If I walked fast enough, I wouldn’t shiver, but if I walked too fast, I risked stepping into a fountain or walking face first into a wall. I hated myself for having wanted this, for still wanting it.

And I really understood what Luke had said about hoping Merlin would come because it meant a little, very temporary warmth.

I couldn’t stop going over and over the things Merlin had said. There were things he’d hinted at that we hadn’t discussed. I wondered if that meant that we were going to have another talk about what was okay and what wasn’t or if he’d decided not to bother. I wondered if it mattered. I wasn’t sure there was much I’d say no to, at least not as far as things he could do to my body went.

That scared me pretty badly because I was sure there were things I ought to say no to.

The third time, he let me hear him coming again, so I stopped and waited. I licked my lips and forced my voice to work. “Merlin--?”

“Were you expecting someone else?” He almost laughed at me but not quite.

“What the hell am I doing?” I really hoped that he’d know because I was pretty sure I didn’t.

“Give me a moment--” A few seconds later, he was there and putting his arms around my shoulders. He tugged me down to cold stone floor. Then he murmured a word, and the stone beneath us became pleasantly warm. He pulled me in against his body and ran a hand over my head. He sighed.

I let myself relax against him. “Part of me wants to drown in this.”

This time he did laugh. “I was going to say that you’re playing with fire, but the metaphors kind of cancel each other out.”

Which didn’t mean they weren’t both true.

I could hear his heart beating, so I focused on that for a few seconds.

Before I found words, he said, “It’s probably stupid to trust my judgment on this.”

I shook my head. “Mine’s no better.” I really hoped he understood that I wasn’t going to ask him to stop.

He leaned his head on top of mine. “Yeah. I got nothing. I mean-- I’ve enjoyed this. I would still, however long it goes on. You-- a lot of it’s aimed at keeping you from enjoying it.”

I knew that. That was the point, after all, the thing I’d asked for, the thing he’d offered. The thing I still wanted. “I--” I turned my head to press my face into his chest and shook my head.

He made a soothing sound.

“Am I still me?” I hadn’t realized that I was worrying about that.

He didn’t answer for several seconds.

I hoped that meant that he was thinking about it.

“I think so. If you weren’t, you’d be thinking more about what would please me than about any of the rest of it. I’ve been… pretty damned brutal.”

He had been. I knew that. He’d also tried to make sure I got what I wanted, too. “I asked for that,” I reminded him.

“Is it what you expected?” The question was so very gentle that I almost didn’t feel it cut me.

For a moment, I was too numb to answer. “No…” But I really, really wanted him to pin me down and fuck me again. I wanted to scream. I wanted to try to escape and to fail. I wanted him to do things to me that I’d never thought to fear, and I wanted not to be able to stop him. “I still want it.” The words came out as the barest whisper. “What does that say about me?”

His hand stroked my back, and the cloth binding my chest fell away. Merlin started playing with one of my nipples, and all I could do was whimper. “Including this?”

He wasn’t asking just about lactation. I almost said yes, but I choked the word back and made myself think. “Reversible?”

“Promise.” I could hear a smile in his voice. His hand moved from my chest to my face, and he stroked my cheek. “It says you’re a kinky bastard and willing to indulge me.” His voice had gone low and dangerous in a way that told me that he wasn’t going to give me a choice about whatever came next.

He laid me on the floor, on my back, and the rock of the floor reshaped to grow over my wrists, pinning them beyond my strength to escape. Then he started pulling out my body hair.

When he plucked a single hair, it was like a single brilliant point of pain that vanished rapidly into the darkness. One after another after another left me wondering why I couldn’t see by the light produced. 

When he ripped out many hairs all at once, it felt darker and like he was taking my skin, too. I couldn’t tell where he’d been and where he hadn’t, so each patch came as a horrible surprise.

None of it hurt very much right in the moment, but it added together to become something terrible, something I knew would never end. I lost words somewhere in the middle of it, and he didn’t stop.

“I don’t mind your hair,” he told me around then. He ran a hand over my belly. “But it will grow back, and, right now, it’s so very easy.”

I’d lost track of who he was and of who I was. I couldn’t even beg him to stop.

He waited several seconds before starting to laugh. Then he forced his cock into my ass again. He’d fucked me so many times already that it almost didn’t hurt.

But only almost. And I think it was more that the pain was becoming normal. 

I’m pretty sure he took hours about it. He milked me more than once and repeatedly worked over my cock, rubbing the shaft with something that burned and then inserting a tendril of himself into my urethra and fucking me that way. That hurt more, but it was somehow easier to bear. Not that I had a choice about any of it.

He stopped when I ran out of tears. He moved away into the darkness then, leaving me shackled to an unusually warm bit of stone.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad of anything as I was when he came back a little while later. The fact that he brought me water almost didn’t register. 

A few days later, I realized that Merlin had had no need to leave my side in order to get water. He’d known it would frighten me, and he’d done it entirely for that.

During the next maybe half an hour, he gave me water a little at a time and ran his hands gently over parts of my body.

Some of that hurt, even with him being gentle, and I shuddered and trembled in response. I wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t start again. I couldn’t see him. He wasn’t saying anything, so I couldn’t judge his voice. I couldn’t even hear his breathing over my own.

Eventually, he kissed me on the forehead. Then the rock encircling my wrists slowly retreated into the floor. “I’m going to pick you up, now,” he said softly.

He hadn’t touched my back, so the main thing I noticed as he lifted me was the sudden loss of warmth.

Then I felt the Logrus around us, and we were abruptly elsewhere.

The air was warm, and I must have made some sort of noise in response to that because I felt Merlin’s chest vibrate with silent laughter. There was a little light, enough to notice, enough to make me squeeze my eyes closed against it but not so much that I couldn’t adjust within a few seconds.

Merlin leaned me against a wall and supported me up until my legs would hold me. At that point, he must have turned on the water because, suddenly, we were wet. The spray felt hot on my body, and eventually, I realized that it wasn’t that it was hot but that I’d gotten so used to being cold.

Merlin washed me. That hurt some, but I think he wasn’t trying to make it hurt. He looked very intent when his face finally came into focus. It was just a different sort of intention, the sort that I recognized from much kinder games than we’d been playing recently.

I didn’t move or say anything until Merlin turned me to face the wall. At that point, I was sure he was going to fuck me again, so I tried very hard to brace myself for the pain.

Merlin touched my shoulder. “Not right now. Not for a while.”

I managed a nod in response and tried equally hard to relax.

Once he’d washed my hair, Merlin used a spell to get rid of the slight beard I’d grown in the maze. He frowned for a few seconds before doing it, so I think he considered putting a blade to my face before he realized that I couldn’t have stayed still while he did it.

After that, he wrapped me in a towel big enough to be a blanket and carried me into a bigger room that looked uncomfortably like where Merlin had kept Luke for years. The color scheme was different, and I thought the room was smaller and barer. Except for the bed.

I wondered if Luke’s quarters had started this small and grown. That was easier than wondering how long I’d be there or what was in there that I wasn’t seeing. Luke’s bedroom had had a lot of very nasty extras.

I turned my face to Merlin’s chest, and he made a soothing sound. A few seconds later, he set me on the bed, propped up on pillows, and sat down beside me. He fed me soup and helped me drink fruit juice.

When he finally spoke again, I was startled. I’d forgotten that was something he did. I suppose that was a sign of how exhausted I was.

“Do you want me here while you sleep? Either watching or sleeping with you, I mean.”

Did I? I really had no idea, so I just stared at him. I thought maybe I could speak, so I tried. “Shouldn’t that be something you decide?” My voice rasped and broke, but I got the words out.

“I’ll give you choices sometimes,” he told me. “There isn’t a right or wrong answer to this one.”

Which implied that there might be at other times. Which, in turn, explained a lot about how fucked up Luke still was. I closed my eyes for a moment.

“I also need to know how much light you want while you sleep.”

I opened my eyes in time to catch the edges of shame in his expression.

“Luke still needs a nightlight,” he explained.

“I don’t.” I wanted very badly to sleep. I just couldn’t until I told him whether or not he should stay, so I made the safe call. “Stay, please.”

The joy in his smile told me that he’d been afraid I’d say no.


	3. Chapter 3

In the morning-- or what passed for it-- Merlin told me that I should step outside his Ways for long enough to pull my head together and decide what I wanted next. It took me about two days out in Shadow to realize that he’d been right to make me go. Then I took another two weeks to think.

Merlin had enjoyed everything in the maze, but he also liked it when we just fucked without the pain and the power. And he didn’t seem unhappy with whatever the hell he was doing with Shadows of Luke.

I had… ‘Enjoyed’ was perhaps the wrong word, but I couldn’t think of a better one. There had been multiple points when I’d had opportunity and awareness enough to stop things and had chosen not to. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known what Merlin was capable of. I knew there’d been points when I couldn’t have said no, not because Merlin wouldn’t listen but because I’d forgotten everything.

I wanted that again. That and the anticipation with no control and, well, everything else. I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d play that sort of game with. Possibly with Dara once upon a time but I wouldn’t trust her now. And I’d never been stupid enough to trust Mandor.

I also wanted to be able to fuck and hurt people myself and to have the option of sex without anyone at all getting hurt. If Merlin was willing, I could have those things, too, not always with him, but still. It wasn’t as if Merlin didn’t know that I wanted that too.

Or maybe he didn’t. Merlin tended to be… ‘focused’ was a weak word. He put people into categories and kept them there until something pushed a change. 

If I became his toy, would he hold me forever?

He already meant to hold me forever as his lover. I hadn’t minded that, but he’d allowed me the same space he wanted for himself. Playing with pain and power might change that.

I still wanted it. I still wanted everything. All of the members of our family were greedy.

So I went back.

More time had passed for Merlin than for me. We’d both known that was likely.

I spent a while admiring Gale’s new words and Beren’s pottery. Beren was ten. Gale was three. I’d met a number of Merlin’s construct children, possibly all of them, possibly not, but none of them particularly wanted my approval or my stories. I’d met Clayre and Gramble, too, but I didn’t mention that to Merlin, not ever. Ghostwheel knew, but he wouldn’t tell.

Luke was sensitive enough to Merlin that he knew something was off between us. He kept looking at me and at Merlin when he thought we wouldn’t notice. I don’t think Merlin did. Luke relaxed eventually when he realized that it was just between Merlin and me, that we weren’t going to involve him or the children.

Merlin wouldn’t let it touch the children, not even if his heart broke. That meant leaving Luke out of it.

I wouldn’t involve Luke either and not just because Ghostwheel had warned me against it shortly after I met Beren. Even without Ghostwheel and Beren and Gale, Luke in the situations Merlin and I might create for ourselves… We’d probably reset him to where he’d been when I first met him, and that was best case. Worst case, he’d figure out how to kill both of us because whatever Ghostwheel might do to him after would be better than letting us near his children.

Ghostwheel might even accept that as valid reason for killing us. He wouldn’t be happy, but he understood people a lot better than he used to and genuinely did like Luke.

If Luke killed me first, Ghostwheel and Merlin would both hesitate. The man who murdered Caine was smart enough to use that.

None of which got me further with Merlin. He was waiting for me to say something, and I… wasn’t ready. I’d thought I was, but I wasn’t. We fucked a few times, the way we had for years, but Merlin kept watching me as if I might suddenly demand something else.

The third or fourth night, while we were still cuddling after, I told him, “I want this.” I touched his face, just the lightest brush of my fingertips, and smiled at him.

He went completely still.

“I want the other stuff, too,” I went on, “both what you did to me and what I sometimes do to other people.”

He moved close enough that he could put his head on my chest. “I don’t get that.” He didn’t sound as if he disbelieved me.

I sighed. “Yeah. I don’t think I can explain, either, because I don’t know why. Well, I know _why_ for each. I just… I don’t know how I can want all three. I don’t think I need a rapid rotation or exact parity or anything. I--” I shrugged. “I can’t think of anyone else I could give power to-- like that I mean-- and not have it be utterly stupid.”

Merlin didn’t answer for a moment. “Possibly Aunt Flora,” he said at last.

She was the least alien of our aunts and uncles-- of our _known_ aunts and uncles-- and any one of them would be powerful enough for what I craved. They also wouldn’t come with the same risks as someone from the Courts. 

Different risks, certainly. Potentially bigger risks.

Also, I wasn’t sure which of them might actually be interested and which appalled.

“I’d rather have you.” It wasn’t quite ‘I love you.’ I hope he heard it anyway. “I’m not sure anyone else would have realized that I needed time after. I didn’t.”

“You would have.”

“Only if you didn’t push me to stay.”

If he didn’t realize that he could have kept me at that point and not had me fight, well-- That actually could be dangerous. I’d probably still do it again, but it would be a damned stupid thing to do.

“I wasn’t sure you saw that.” He pulled back then propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at me. “I think… If you’d asked me ten years ago, I probably would have kept you. Because I wouldn’t have seen it.”

Right. “So now what?”

He pressed one hand flat against my chest, covering one of my nipples. “You let that go.” He didn’t sound surprised.

I couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I thought about not, but I also… It would have been harder to get the mental distance I needed if I was still having to--” I shook my head. Squeezing milk out of my nipples had been kind of creepy when I wasn’t doing it to please Merlin. I took a deep breath. “If you want it-- I won’t keep it when we’re… not playing, but it’s okay.” I finally made myself look at his face again.

His smile felt like a sunrise. “When?”

My mouth went dry. My stomach clenched. I needed several seconds before I could answer. “It depends. Depends on what you want. On how long you want.”

He nodded. “Is that something you can talk about in bed or do you need more space?”

My surprise must have shown in my face.

His expression went stiff. “I’m not 100% stupid about people.” There was just a hint of bitterness under the flippancy.

“I never thought you were.” Except about Luke.

He heard the part I didn’t say because he shook his head, sat up, and turned away. “You know that one only gets more and more complicated.”

I did, so I nodded. I hadn’t said much to Merlin about his changing relationship with Luke. There wasn’t anything I really could say on the subject that would matter. “Not thinking about him at all would be weirder.” I kept the words soft. “All of that is there.” What Luke did. What Jasra did. What Merlin did. What I did.

I sat up, too. “I think, at the moment, I’m apt to over-commit. I… don’t have anyone expecting me or expecting to hear from me, but there are people… If Dad calls or Vialle, I really need to answer because they wouldn’t, not just to chat.”

“Any of our mutual relatives calling, yes.” Merlin didn’t turn to look at me. “Ghostwheel can certainly handle that part.”

“That works.” I tried to keep my voice light. “There’s also… Sometimes, I actually do need to be somewhere. Say… Grandmother’s birthday or something like that. I need to be able to tell you that before we start anything.”

It took me a moment to realize that Merlin was laughing. “You don’t want to go to Rebma for your Grandmother’s birthday.”

“Well… But I kind of have to. If I don’t, she blames Dad and Vialle.”

“Ah.” This time, Merlin turned to look at me. “I don’t envy you that, but I do sometimes envy you Random and Vialle.”

I shrugged with one shoulder, not trying to deny that I understood but more acknowledging that sometimes family is unfair. I had had Benedict; Merlin had had Mandor. I’m not sure if he ever thought to envy me on that one, but I thought it was the one that had done him the most damage.

Not that I was ever going to be stupid enough to say it.

“I envy you your children,” I told him. That much was honest, anyway. “I don’t want to think of the shitshow that me having children would incite.” Assuming I even could. There’d been shapeshifters involved in the conception of everyone in the family apart from me, and I didn’t have a pet shapeshifter.

Not that I couldn’t. That would be easy. It would just also be a hell of a thing for a kid ever to find out. Possibly not as bad as Merlin and Luke, but… Eventually that one was going to blow like an over-filled septic tank that had been building up methane for years.

Merlin met my eyes. “I would if it weren’t for… political complications. Someone would find out. Someone always finds out.”

“I know.” I smiled at him. “So, if you were King Merlin, conqueror of Amber, would you fuck me immediately or would you wait until I was desperate enough to seduce you?”

Merlin leaned toward me and cupped his hand on my cheek. “Honestly? I’d probably wait. Except that I’m not the Merlin who would attack your home that way, so…” He laughed with just a hint of danger. “It can be whichever you prefer.” He ran his thumb over my lips. “But I think that that Merlin probably expected you to side with him.”

I let my eyelids slide shut and just enjoyed his hand on my face. After a moment, I parted my lips.

He took the invitation and slipped his thumb into my mouth. 

I sucked on it. I wasn’t quite sure if we were starting something or just flirting and then fucking again. Since I didn’t mind either way, I didn’t feel like it was worth stopping to ask.

His other hand wrapped around my throat with just enough force for me to know that he could squeeze without actually making breathing or speaking difficult.

Not that I really could speak just then. I leaned into the hand on my throat for the briefest moment. I wanted him to know that I’d noticed, that I was deliberately not pulling away.

His grip tightened minutely then loosened.

We both knew that, right then, I was stronger and faster than he was. His primary physical advantage was shapeshifting, but he also still had access to the Logrus and to various magics.

“You’re so very tempting,” he whispered, “and I can’t think of a single reason not to.” He pressed his thumb into the roof of my mouth so that the nail cut flesh.

I whimpered but didn’t pull away. I could taste my own blood. I wanted to bite and to taste his as well, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to deal with what he’d do in response.

Both of his hands left me. “On your back,” he said sharply.

I opened my eyes. The hard lines of his face didn’t encourage me to ask questions, so I laid myself flat on the bed.

Merlin bent my legs then wrapped cords around each thigh, just above the knee, to pull my legs up and apart.

My hands clenched. I had to fight not to reach for him. I’m not sure if I wanted to resist or to encourage him.

Neither was my place.

I was nearly hard already, and he noticed. Of course, he noticed.

“Should I bind your hands?” The question was gentle, but I was sure there was a right answer and a wrong answer. I was equally sure that not answering would be a very bad idea.

I swallowed. My tongue didn’t want to move for several seconds. “Please, Merlin. It will be easier.”

He started laughing. “Clever.” He didn’t comment on it further, but he did tie my wrists to the headboard. He also spent a lot of time touching each wrist, letting me feel his strength, the size and warmth of his hands, the way he was taking my ability to resist.

I gave him sounds of pleasure and despair in response. Because his touch felt good. Because Martin-the-Prisoner didn’t even have as much hope as Corwin when he’d been blinded.

The next ten minutes or so were simply Merlin touching me, nothing that hurt but a great deal that could have if he’d wanted it to. I don’t think he actually believed that I didn’t know that; he just wanted to establish it in deeper parts of my psyche.

He turned one of his hands to ice and pressed it against my cock. I screamed and pulled on the cords that bound me. By the time I was aware enough to realize that these cords were tougher than the ones he’d used last time, he was fitting a cage on my cock so that I couldn’t get hard again.

I made a sound that was more question than protest. Then I felt him pulling back my foreskin and pushing something into my urethra. It slid in easily, so he must have used lube, and it didn’t go deep at all, but it worried me. Not in a panic-must-stop-now way, more in a well-this-is-going-to-be-unpleasant way.

Merlin squeezed my ass with one hand. “Because I want to.”

I shuddered and turned my head to the side so that I wasn’t looking at him any more.

“Martin.” He spoke gently, more as if he thought he shouldn’t have to exert himself beyond that than as if he were trying to be kind. He was right, so I turned my head back.

“Please,” I said. “Please don’t.”

He shook his head. “The prisoner doesn’t get choices.” He smiled in a way that was by no means reassuring. “I’m more minded to be cruel than brutal.”

So I was completely unsurprised when he made me drink a bottle of water and then played with me for a while and then made me drink another bottle of water. The cruel rather than brutal part didn’t mean no pain. He spent some time using a claw to carve a design into my belly. That hurt like a motherfucker even before he started dripping something on the wounds that burned.

I didn’t beg him to stop during that part, but I also made no effort to be stoic or silent, just still enough that he didn’t cut deeper than he meant to or anywhere he hadn’t planned. If I’d been able, I’d have had a hard-on from the intensity of his focus and from the obvious pleasure he was taking in my responses.

“You’re so very good at suffering, Martin. It makes me glad I kept you.” Merlin’s eyes met mine. He trailed the fingers of one hand across my abdomen, making each incision he touched bleed again. Then he leaned in and kissed me deeply.

I was torn between kissing as the prisoner we were pretending I was and kissing as myself in a way that let Merlin know that I was still choosing to be there. I went with the real kiss, and I think it was the right call.

Merlin slipped one hand under my head and kept kissing me. That went on for-- Well, minutes. Some number of minutes. I’m not sure. When he pulled back, he ran a finger over my lips. “Mother thought I was too weak, too soft, to keep you.”

Whatever else King Merlin was, he wasn’t weak or soft.

He forced more water on me. This time, I tried to refuse. His eyes narrowed. He waited about three seconds-- probably in case I wanted to speak-- then pinched my nose closed. When I opened my mouth to breathe, he poured the water in.

I choked and coughed and pulled very hard on the cords holding me in place.

Merlin stopped pouring the water and simply sat, watching me, until I stilled. At that point, he said, “I didn’t think you were stupid. We both know you don’t have a choice.”

I sobbed, but there really wasn’t anything I could say in response. I knew. I’d just-- Had I forgotten or had I wanted to know if he really would?

When he offered me the bottle again, I drank. I was starting to feel the water by then. I wasn’t desperate by any means, just a little uncomfortable.

He pushed damp hair off my forehead. “Do we need more water?”

I stared at him. I had no idea what he expected me to say. I didn’t want it. I was going to be in agony with just what he’d forced on me already. But saying no wasn’t an option either. “Merlin--”

His smile told me that he knew he’d given me a no-win question. He wanted to see me hesitate. He wanted to see me struggle.

“Some day,” I said, “I will find a way to kill you.” Right then, I even mostly meant it.

He laughed. “Would you enjoy what Mother would do to Rebma in retaliation?”

I knew Dara, so that was beyond a believable threat. “I’m sorry, Merlin. I’m sorry. I’ll be good. I promise.” The words tumbled out before I could even think about them.

He made me drink the rest of the bottle. Then he fucked me slowly while my bladder got fuller and fuller. He used lube, but that was small comfort since what he wanted was to put pressure on me, inside and out.

By the time he came, I was crying, the tears dripping into my ears. “Let me piss, Merlin. Please.” I couldn’t muster the energy for screams or even for exclamation points. “Please--” I repeated the words until they were nonsense in my own ears then kept going because I was helpless to do anything else.

Merlin left me for a few minutes then. I could hear him in the bathroom, pissing. Then he ran water.

I started struggling to escape because I had to do something more than crying.

Then Merlin was back. He put a hand on my lower abdomen and leaned on it.

I’d expected it, but it was still enough of a shock to make me scream. Not a big scream or anything, but there isn’t another word that’s right.

He spent some time after that massaging my prostate. That was kind of like lightning in my brain, and I couldn’t tell if I wanted more or if I’d pay any price to have him stop. Merlin seemed to enjoy the sounds I was making, so he set some device-- mechanical or magical, I don’t know-- to keeping that going so that he could play with other parts of my body.

He burned spirals into my arms and into the soles of my feet. If I’d been able to think at all, I’d have realized that the latter meant he expected to keep playing for a few days. He forced me to play tic-tac-toe with grids burned into my chest.

I couldn’t think and could barely speak, but he smacked my ass any time I took too long to name a move or forgot the names he’d given each square. The bruises took longer to heal after than the burns did.

After the third game, I started screaming. My body couldn’t bear what was happening any more, but none of it was enough to grant me unconsciousness, so I had to bear it anyway. I know that Merlin fucked me at least twice more before he finally let me empty my bladder. I clung to him then because he was the only real thing that wasn’t my body’s pain. That he’d caused that pain mattered not at all.

Then he told me to sleep and backed it up with a spell.

I didn’t even try to resist.


	4. Chapter 4

I woke alone and in chains.

His Majesty wasn’t done with me yet.

I felt like I’d been tortured because I had been. Right at that moment, knowing that I’d consented and that I could end it any time didn’t help at all. I folded in on myself for a while, pressing my head against my knees. Doing that hurt, but so would anything else. I don’t know if I was hoping that it would all go away if I didn’t look or if I was just tired.

I might never have looked up at all, but I felt the air shift a little, and suddenly, I smelled food. I raised my head and saw a bowl-- wooden-- filled with some sort of porridge. The contents were hot enough to steam. I smelled honey. I weighed the likelihood of drugs against my hunger then shrugged.

If Merlin wanted to drug me, me not eating wouldn’t prevent it. My chains rattled as I lifted the bowl.

The spoon was also wooden. I supposed that meant I wasn’t going to be sharpening it into a knife or gouging designs into the gray stone of the walls and floor.

I looked around as I ate and started to figure out why I hadn’t wanted to look before. The floor and walls were each a single piece, no flagstones or bricks, no mortar or seams. I was pretty sure that, if I looked, I’d find that the precise corners didn’t actually indicate separation between the walls or between the walls and the floor.

The room was tiny. It couldn’t have been more than about eight feet on a side. The ceiling looked to be higher than that, but I wasn’t up to standing to see if it really was out of my reach. There was a toilet in one corner but no sink. No door or windows either, and I couldn’t figure out where the light was coming from.

Lightweight chains linked shackles on my wrists and ankles and one around my neck to a large metal loop in the center of the floor. They were long enough to allow me to reach any corner of the room and strong enough that I couldn’t break them. Given the lack of anything resembling an exit, they were decoration more than anything.

Merlin making a point and me noticing.

I pretty much ended up licking the bowl. Then I forced myself to walk to the toilet. The burns on my feet made each step excruciating, but I wasn’t going to crawl. After, I walked back to where I’d been, just to make a point.

The bowl and spoon were gone by the time I got back. The floor simply swallowed them.

I certainly could have eaten more, but thirst was going to be a much more immediate issue. I really hoped Merlin wasn’t planning to make me drink from the toilet. I wouldn’t. That was going to be a hard line, and I was almost certain that we’d discussed it before I went into the maze.

I still remembered the things Luke had said about drinking from puddles on the floor of the maze and how he couldn’t tell if the water was clean but really knew it couldn’t possibly have been, not given the rats. Even leaving aside the question of Luke’s bodily functions.

That had been in my mind when I asked for a source of clean water.

There wasn’t anything for me to do except sit and wait. Walking hurt too much, or I would have paced just to keep my muscles from stiffening. Instead, I fidgeted with the chains, twirling them, turning links, seeing what sorts of sounds I could get from them. It was better than being alone with only the sound of my own breathing and the scent of my own body.

Eventually, I slept. 

When I woke, Merlin was there. He gave me water and then washed my still healing wounds. His hands remained gentle throughout, and his eyes kept returning to my face.

It took me a lot longer than it should have to realize that Merlin was trying to make sure I really was okay. This was Merlin checking on me rather than King Merlin playing at being gentle. Once I realized, I put my hand over his. “I really am here.”

He went very still for a moment then smiled. “Good.” His smile faltered a little. “You look really hot with the chains and with my marks all over your body. I just--” He shook his head.

Oh. I stopped breathing for a moment. Then, I squeezed his hand. “You’re supposed to like it,” I told him. “I wouldn’t if you didn’t.”

“I-- That went further than I meant to.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You were a long way past being able to--”

“I wanted that.” I had. He was right about my ability to consent at the end of things, but I’d wanted it. I was beyond terrified of what might happen, but I wanted it still. “I want you to take me to those places.”

He inhaled audibly. He put the hand I wasn’t holding on my abdomen and pressed down on my bladder. “Even that?”

My voice trembled as I said, “Did it turn you on?” I could almost see flames in his eyes.

“Oh, yes.” Merlin sounded dangerous.

“I want that part.” I was sure that him fucking me right then would hurt like hell, but I hoped he would anyway. “That’s-- That’s what I’m for when we’re doing this, what I want to be for.” I met his eyes then, very deliberately, tilted my head back to expose my throat, my throat encircled with a metal collar that Merlin had put on me.

Merlin inhaled with a sound that was almost a moan. He bent and sank his teeth into my shoulder right where it joined my neck.

The effort not to try to escape made me shake, and the pain forced a sound out of me that was half whimper and half scream and really shouldn’t have come from a human throat. It died away into whimpering as Merlin’s hands found partially healed burns and pressed down. I could feel his teeth changing shape to dig deeper into my flesh. I felt like the sound of my fingernails scraping the floor, seeking purchase, should have been audible even over the other noises I was making.

When Merlin released me, my blood glistened on his fangs and colored his lips. His tongue flicked out and moved along his upper lip. “You taste good,” he said. This time, there really were flames in his eyes. “You’re a fool not to cling to the respite.” The threat there was beyond clear.

I shuddered. “I want to,” I whispered, “and I don’t. I can’t--” I shook my head as words failed me.

One of his hands cupped my cheek and jaw. “Martin--”

The lust in his voice made my stomach twist, so I gave him a groan to let him know he was getting to me that way.

“I want so much, Martin. You should be terrified.”

I was, and it was getting me hard. I wanted to beg for mercy, but I was both afraid he’d give it and afraid he wouldn’t. “I want a hell of a lot, too.” I tried to put both of my desires-- for mercy and for absolutely none-- into my voice.

He laughed and then kissed me.

I opened for him, letting that very much no longer human tongue into my mouth and moaning as it went deep. I couldn’t quite stop myself from wrapping my arms around him.

He pulled back for a moment to study my face. “Yes,” he said with almost vicious satisfaction. “Yes.” Then he descended on me again.

But he let me keep clinging. He was gentler this time but not less cruel. He seemed to be testing to see what frightened me and where the lines were between pain that turned me on and pain that scared me. He kept very close to that edge, and I’m pretty sure that, each time he crossed it, he was deliberately pushing to make sure I knew that what I wanted wasn’t the point.

He didn’t try to use the chains to hold me. This time, the surrender, the allowing him to touch me as he wished, was all on me. There was a certain amount of challenge in his smile as his hands moved over my body. He wasn’t pushing to find the point at which I’d fight; he was pushing to find the point at which I wanted the chains to tighten.

When he found it, I sobbed and turned my head away.

“I could,” he said. “I might. But I’d also really enjoy seeing you press yourself against the wall, trying to get as far away from me as possible.” One of his hands closed on my cock and squeezed while the other made me bleed. He kept me at the point of desperate desire to escape while he brought me to orgasm. Then he stood and stepped back. He watched silently as I curled in on myself and cried.

After a few minutes, he said, “Are you afraid now, Martin?”

I was, but then I had been from the moment I woke up with chains on. I tried to nod, and I made a sound that was meant to be confirmation but was mostly just incoherent. I didn’t realize he’d come in close again until I felt his hand just barely brushing my skin as it moved along my spine.

“So beautiful,” he murmured. “So very, very beautiful.”

I felt proud that he thought so, and that frightened me more than anything else he’d done. It was a sweet and addictive terror, and I knew I didn’t have the strength not to surrender to it.

He sighed, and his hand pressed into my skin between my shoulderblades. He hadn’t touched me there recently, so there weren’t any burns or cuts or… Well, it didn’t hurt.

I pressed back against his hand. I’m not sure how much of that was for comfort, how much of it was desire to please him, and how much was meant to let him know that I knew who he was and that I still wanted to be there.

“I like seeing you helpless and frightened,” he told me. “I kind of hoped I wouldn’t, but it’s amazing.” There was a little awe in that; he actually sounded as if it were a thing he still didn’t entirely believe was possible.

Then he lay down behind me and and curled his body around mine. That was the point when I gathered my wits enough to realize that he hadn’t removed any of his clothing and hadn’t actually gotten off himself. And it wasn’t that he wasn’t interested. I could feel that much from his cock against my ass, only thin layers of fabric keeping our skin from touching.

“I like this part, too.” His words were the barest breath in my ear. “The part where you actually want me with you.”

Because Luke never had. Still didn’t. He’d been terrified that Merlin’s absence was a sign of coming disaster, but he’d never really wanted Merlin there, not after the first time Merlin raped him. It was just better than the maze. Any hell was better, from Luke’s point of view, than the maze as long as there was light and warmth and a certain likelihood of clean water.

I took a deep breath and forced my mind back together. Then I let myself laugh. “I do, so there’s that.” My throat was still a little clogged from my recent tears, so I sounded weird to myself, but Merlin made a small, happy noise that made me glad I’d spoken. “Why didn’t you--?”

He laughed, too. “There are a lot of things I didn’t do. Sometimes, I enjoy denying myself.”

I tucked that bit of information away in case it was a game I could play with him later, one that wouldn’t remind him of Jasra or of Luke. They weren’t always with us when we fucked, but I didn’t want either of them there, not ever, not even the parts of Luke that Merlin still loved.

Not even the parts of Luke that I loved.

Merlin had been right that I couldn’t have him without Luke. I couldn’t, no more than I could have Merlin without Ghostwheel and Ariyus and their younger construct siblings. I just generally didn’t let myself think about the constructs as Merlin’s children-- that was the surest assassin of libido I’d found --but I loved them, too. I think Ghostwheel understood that. Ariyus may have. I’m not sure the others quite believed that I was real.

“These fucking chains are really uncomfortable.” Merlin’s complaint broke through my ruminations.

This time, I had trouble stopping laughing. “Your idea,” I told him with no sympathy in the words, none whatsoever.

“I know.” He sighed with just enough extra sound for me to know he was exaggerating. “They do look good on you, though, so I can’t quite regret that part.”

Which told me that I probably should expect the collar and shackles to appear again.

Since we didn’t seem to be playing any more, I said, “I really could use some water. Food, too, if that’s on offer, but mostly water.”

Merlin made a sound I couldn’t quite interpret. After about three seconds, he said, “Here or somewhere else?”

I really didn’t want to choose, so I didn’t answer.

“No,” he said. “That one’s on you.”

“Cruel,” I told him without heat.

“Nevertheless.”

I considered. “Somewhere else. I need a wash and a real meal. You can put me in chains again later.”


	5. Chapter 5

Years later, some time after Beren walked the Pattern, Merlin and I were having dinner together after an afternoon of fucking. I knelt at Merlin’s feet and ate from his hands. That was as much my choice as his and was my way to let him know that, if he still wanted to play more, I’d enjoy it.

Well, ‘enjoy’ was generally the wrong word. I wanted it desperately before. I wanted it again, just as desperately, after. During moments in the middle when I had respite, when I had choices, I remembered both why I wanted it and why choosing it over and over and over was the hardest part.

“You’re thinking again,” Merlin said.

“Yes.”

“Is that something you need right now or something you don’t?” His question was gentle and genuine.

I considered that. “I’m going to have to look at it eventually,” I said at last. “Maybe not tonight but eventually.” I took a deep breath. “There’s an incredible temptation to forget Amber and Rebma, to let this part be the only thing that matters.”

“Ah.” He stroked my head then pinched my earlobe between his thumb and forefinger. “You’d get very, very bored. Eventually.”

I didn’t think I would. Going there would change me, probably a lot, but it would be very easy to let those parts of myself go, especially if I never saw reminders.

Even when things were at their worst, Luke had known that not having a choice was easier than dealing with the rest of the family.

I wasn’t going to tell Merlin that part. He and his children needed allies in the family and would for a very long time yet. “I always regret it when you send an invitation and I have to say ‘no.’” It was worse when I was at loose ends and the invitation didn’t come, but he didn’t need to hear that, either.

Those were the times when I wandered Shadow and found someone interesting to play with. What the games were varied wildly. I understood people better than Merlin did, and I liked finding unique fracture points. Sometimes. Other times, I was just brutal because I could be and didn’t feel like any sort of challenge.

He sighed. “If I keep you like this too long, you won’t be able to go back out there.”

That was blunter than I expected. “I know.” I leaned against his leg. “I just like getting kidnapped at your whim.”

His laugh was almost inaudible. “So I should do that more often?”

“It’s hot as fuck.” I didn’t think I could explain the exciting combination of arousal and terror that I felt then or the way it felt like the floor dropping out from under me each time I realized that I had no excuse for saying no. I still could, and I never forgot that, but part of what I’d offered was that I wouldn’t say no when Merlin called, not unless I had a powerful reason.

“How often do you jerk off, thinking about that?” He still sounded amused.

I glanced sideways and up at his face. He looked amused, too. “I try not to. The times I can’t… can’t visit, I mean. It’s… I never feel like I should get off right then.” I hoped he’d understand. “That belongs to you right then.”

Now he did start laughing. “And that part gets you even harder, doesn’t it?” He hooked a hand under my chin and pulled my head to an angle that made kissing me easier. Once he was done kissing me, he said, “Next time you have to say no, I want to you to take the longest bit of free time you have after and keep yourself hard as long as you can. When we’re together, I’ll ask you, and I’ll decide if it was enough.” There was a note of warning in his voice that made me shudder. “I’ll be very disappointed if you orgasm.”

I whimpered.

He pushed back from the table and opened his trousers. Our eyes met for a moment. I’d have seen the command there even if it hadn’t been obvious.

I got my mouth on his cock as fast as I could. I would have even if I hadn’t wanted it-- Merlin’s punishments for actual disobedience were creatively unpleasant-- but I really did want to blow him. Half of me hoped he’d be brutal, and half of me hoped he’d let me show how hard I could work to please him.

He kept one hand on the back of my head, but he let me have control.

I ran my tongue over his cock as I took it in. I didn’t try to go all the way down. Experience told me that, if I did that, Merlin would keep me there. He never let me have that much control when I was playing the fucktoy.

From the noises he made, he enjoyed himself, but he made me work for almost half an hour before he let himself come. It wasn’t the longest blow job he’d ever demanded, but it was long enough for my jaw to ache, long enough for me to know that he was being deliberately cruel.

I didn’t try to pull back when he was done. Partly because I knew he wouldn’t let me, partly because I didn’t want to. We weren’t in very deep waters right then, but I was pretty sure we would be soon, possibly that night, possibly the next day. For the moment, I could relax, so I closed my eyes and made a small sound of contentment.

The hand on the back of my head pressed just a little bit harder. “You’re a wonder, Martin.”

I recognized that as Merlin-my-lover rather than Merlin-my-master, so I opened my eyes and smiled up at him.

He rubbed his thumb along my jaw. “How much time?” he asked softly. “How long can I keep you right now?”

My breath caught, and my mouth went dry. I’d give him forever if he asked, but I couldn’t say that. When I was finally able to speak, I said, “No one’s expecting me back in Amber for months.”

Which was years in Merlin’s Ways. He wouldn’t keep me that long, but when I left would be his choice this time. He was a better judge of that part than I ever would be.

I heard his breath hiss between his teeth, and I was glad of the indication that he wanted me to stay as much as I wanted to stay.

“You’re a fool,” he said.

“I trust you,” I told him.

His words were probably as true as mine.

We spent that night cuddling in Merlin’s bedroom. In the morning, he gave me something that would keep me out for a few hours. We’d learned the hard way that, although I was fine with it before and after, I would panic if I was conscious when someone started shapeshifting my body. I probably could have done it if Merlin was the one making the changes-- maybe-- but he wasn’t willing to trust his skills in that direction. Not with changing my body.

I knew the damage that an accident in that direction could do, so I didn’t argue. I didn’t think it was something Merlin would fuck up, but it was definitely something that he’d never forgive himself for if it went wrong.

I didn’t know what he’d have done to me this time. Tits were a given, usually, mostly because they were easy to undo. Merlin didn’t so much get off on tits as he did on the evidence-- evidence that I couldn’t deny-- that my body was his.

I got off on that part, too, and he’d never changed Luke’s body that way. Sometimes, I needed to remember that I wasn’t Luke. Sometimes, I needed something that Luke couldn’t have laid claim to even if he’d wanted. Not that he was ever going to want to.

I never told Merlin that that mattered. If he guessed, he never mentioned it.

When I woke, after, I was in Merlin’s bed again. I lay on my back, and my arms were stretched over my head and tethered to the bed frame. I tugged a little, more to let Merlin know I was awake than because I expected to find any give.

“By all means struggle,” Merlin said. “Any place you end up that isn’t that bed will be far less comfortable. I’m pretty sure that, next time I put you where you are now, you won’t dare twitch for fear of pissing me off.”

Merlin’s words let me know that he wanted to pretend that he’d just captured me, that I didn’t know yet what he was capable of doing.

I pulled harder on the cords holding my wrists. I couldn’t see Merlin from where I lay. “Merlin? What--?” I let panic seep into my voice and stopped short as if I’d just noticed the tits, as if they were a surprise.

I heard movement.

Then Merlin was sitting on the bed next to me. He squeezed one of my tits. “Nothing belongs to you any more, Martin. No territory. No power.” He ran his thumb over my hardening nipple. “Not even this.”

I made a small sound of protest.

Merlin chuckled. “One of the things that’s kept me going for years was knowing that I’d get you like this, eventually.” His other hand trailed down my belly until he could take my cock in his hand. “I always wanted to know what you like and what you don’t.” Both hands squeezed tight enough to force a gasp from me. “I always wanted to shove you against something and force myself inside you.” 

He squeezed harder, and I writhed, trying desperately to escape. As his grip tightened, I made noises that were hardly human. Pulling against his grip hurt even more as he was strong enough to rip pieces off of me if he wanted to.

Eventually, his hands opened. “Yes,” he said softly. “Very good.”

I choked, trying to stifle a sob.

“I suppose I could just have done it, back in Sawall Ways. Mandor would have understood. Mother’d have been annoyed, but she’d have let me make you a pet.” His hand brushed my balls and moved further down. “What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever had in your ass?”

I shook my head, half denying that it was happening and half refusing him an answer.

He laughed at me. The hand that had been on my tit moved to my face. “It’s not going to matter.” His voice and his touch were-- temporarily-- gentle. “There are so many possibilities, and I intend to visit every one of them. For tonight, for tomorrow--” He smiled, and I shuddered. “Later, you won’t fight me because of what I might do. For now, I want to watch as you accept that, yes, I really can and will use your body as I please.”

I let most of my mind slip sideways into the fantasy of not knowing, into being that innocent, that ignorant. The part of my mind that held back was mostly focused on how fucking hot Merlin was when he was vicious. That was going straight to my cock.

Merlin glanced at my crotch and flashed me a genuinely sweet smile that was completely outside of the role he was playing. The smile disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared. “No mercy.” He bared teeth, showing fangs. “No respite.” He leaned toward my face, and I tensed. He pressed his lips against mine.

After he straightened, he said, “I know you. I’m going to have to prove it.” This time, his smile promised pain and helplessness.

“Merlin--”

His hand pressed against my throat. “No. No words, Martin. No lies.” The pressure eased for a moment, and his eyes met mine.

It took me almost three heartbeats to realize that this was my last chance to say no. I lowered my chin minutely. 

Merlin knew enough to recognize that as permission. He said a word I didn't recognize.

My throat went tight as I felt magic settling on me. Then I realized that the tightness wasn’t fear of the spell. It was the effect of the spell. I tried to speak, but only noise came out. I yanked on the cords tying my arms to the bed frame and once again found them unyielding.

Merlin watched me without expression for a moment. Then he slapped me hard enough that I tasted blood.

I went very still.

“Better,” he said. “The only way out of this room is with Logrus.”

I shuddered.

He smiled, and I suddenly felt the Chaos in him as he brought the Logrus to the front of his mind and let it suffuse his body. 

When he touched me with the Logrus, half of me expected my skin to burn and peel away. It didn’t, of course, and I knew it wouldn’t, but the imprint of the Pattern inside me, combined with my own power, wouldn’t stand against this, not under these circumstances, not when I couldn’t reach through Shadow to draw on the stability of the real thing.

“I could just fuck you with this,” he said softly, “but I think you’d pass out pretty fast. You’d eat through your power trying to shield yourself from it. I don’t want you passing out. I don’t want to destroy your mind, either. I could, but that would leave me with nothing very interesting.” For a moment, he looked unhappy, and I realized that memories of Luke were in bed with us again.

I pretended not to notice. Instead, I spat at him. The spittle fell short, but it got his attention.

He gripped my hair and twisted. “That was… unwise.” This time, when Merlin kissed me, it was an attack, a challenge. His tongue changed shape, filled my mouth, and went deeper. The horrifying taint of the Logrus went with it.

I choked and gagged, but I wasn’t fool enough to bite. If it had been real, I might have done so simply because it would have been the only way I could show my anger. He’d carefully stayed where I’d have trouble kicking at him

When Merlin finally pulled back, he forced a gag between my jaws. The thing extended and retracted inside my mouth, pushing deep into my throat and then pulling back, over and over and over. It felt a lot like Merlin fucking my throat with a tentacle, just without the friction on my lips.

I made a sound of desperate protest. Merlin laughed, and the gag or whatever it actually was changed its movement for a few seconds, becoming wider and more forceful. I wasn’t sure if the change was a response to what I’d done or to Merlin’s laugh or if it might just be a random thing.

I figured out rapidly that Merlin could control the movements and that it also responded to what I did. If I sucked and licked, the thrusts were shallower and slower. If I struggled or tried to make noise, the results got steadily less pleasant.

Merlin watched with all signs of fascination and arousal as I experimented. After several minutes, he said, “I won’t let you get too dry.” He stroked my hair off my forehead. “That won’t require any pause at all.”

Which meant he could put liquid through the gag. I choked a little then had to ride out the answering brutality from the thing in my mouth.

Merlin put his hand on my throat again. “Yes.” He sounded almost ecstatic. “I thought you’d look amazing like this, and I was right.” He brushed his thumb along the underside of my jaw. “I’m glad you’ve got the family stamina. I can fuck you-- I can watch you getting fucked-- for a very long time.” He licked his lips, and his voice changed a little, getting harder but also more aroused. “No respite. You’ll endure until I’m satisfied.”

I spent the next few seconds focused as much on not raising my hips to beg for Merlin’s attention for my hard-on as I was on where Merlin’s hands actually were. None of this was my choice. If Merlin wanted to break every promise he’d ever made me, he could. He wouldn’t, but he could.

I knew that his cock in my ass was going to hurt. I also wanted it desperately. Shifting my legs in any way that wasn’t an attack-- or, I suppose, a defense-- was out of character for the Martin I was supposed to be, but I did it anyway. I bent my knees a little and moved my legs apart. I didn’t spread them wide, but I knew Merlin wouldn’t miss it.

His laughter this time was a gentler thing. One hand cupped my face. The index finger from the other tapped my nose. “Greedy,” he said. “I’m still enjoying this part.” He studied my face. “I mean the no respite part. There’s going to be something-- me or not-- pounding you from both ends for a very long time.” There was affection in the words but also a lack of give that told me that we were definitely past the point when he’d let me say no.

He might give that back to me tomorrow. He might not do it for weeks, months even. I’d asked for that, and it scared the shit out of me, but we’d been playing these games for a very long time. We both knew what I wanted. We both knew what he wanted.

He fucked me on the bed and gave me the friction I needed to get off. Then he went out of his way to make the second round hurt enough that I couldn’t help struggling to escape. He put something inside me that burned, and the pain got worse every time he moved inside me. I’m pretty sure I screamed, too. I must have.

After he came, after I’d reached the point of being unable to fight him, Merlin moved me so that I was in the middle of the room with my arms chained over my head. He forced my legs apart and shackled those so that I couldn’t move them much. He set some sort of spell powered dildo moving in and out of my ass.

I writhed, but there was nowhere to go.

Merlin stood back and watched me. “You’re really beautiful. I don’t get to see this when I’m focused on fucking you.” He walked around me slowly, very slowly.

I hoped he liked what he saw. I hoped he wanted to keep me. I hoped he’d give me mercy.

Two out of three. Mercy would have been a promise broken.

I lost track of things for a while at that point. I know he gave me water at least three times. I know that the burning from whatever he’d put inside me started to fade. I know that my legs started to tremble and that I’d have fallen if I could have.

About the time I started thinking that maybe I could manage what my body was feeling, Merlin stepped in close again and started playing with my tits and with my cock and balls. Some parts of that were beyond good. Other parts… I’m pretty sure I screamed then, too.

After, Merlin told me he’d kept me there for about twenty hours before he took me back to the bed and fucked me again.

I mainly remember a vast relief at being horizontal. I didn’t have it in me to do much but cling to Merlin as he fucked me and then as he shifted to get more of himself inside me so that my belly bulged obscenely. He pressed on that bulge and massaged it. I wanted to sob. I wanted to twist away.

The damned thing in my mouth was still moving. I’d long since given up trying to placate it, but I was still trying not to provoke it. I had enough awareness, enough thought, left to realize that part of what Merlin was doing was making me watch the increasing distension in my abdomen so that the part of me that clung to agency and independence would understand that I was a thing.

Merlin wouldn’t do any of this to a person. (He would.) He certainly wouldn’t do it to a person he loved and respected. (He had.) I wanted it to stop. (I didn’t. I really didn’t)

It should have been harder for Merlin to coax me to orgasm this time, but he barely had to touch me, and I was hard again almost immediately. He kept working my cock even after the possibility of another orgasm became horrifying.

Finally, he touched the gag and whispered something. It shrank and stilled, and he slowly worked it out of my mouth. He smiled at me with dark promise as he stroked my neck. “I think watching this thing fuck you was better than doing it myself. We’ll definitely be doing that again.” He massaged the left hinge of my jaw. “When it’s my cock down your throat, I can’t see your eyes or how the muscles in your throat move or how your body shakes from exhaustion.” He moved to massaging the right hinge of my jaw.

I felt the part of him still inside me start to move, and I hoped he was done. I met his eyes.

He wasn’t done.

I sobbed and gripped his arms hard enough to bruise.

He let me. He kept his eyes on my face as he played with forcing my abdominal muscles to stretch further, with sending rippling bulges from side to side.

I didn’t even try to withhold my sounds of pain. If I’d been able to speak, I’d have begged him to stop. He wouldn’t have listened, but I’d have asked.

He started rubbing and squeezing the raw, bruised skin of my tits, mostly focusing on my nipples. “So much more to work with here.” He shuddered in pleasure, and I wasn’t sure if it was something about touching my tits or something about the part of him inside my body.

I squeezed my eyes closed.

“Martin.” Merlin’s voice was almost gentle.

I wasn’t foolish enough to think that gentleness meant choice.

One of his hands cupped my jaw. The other kept pinching and twisting one of my very sore nipples.

I opened my eyes to find Merlin studying my face. I thought he looked worried, so I tried to speak one more time. Nothing came out at all.

“Yeah, no,” he said. “You gave me you. I’m keeping you.” Those words were adamantine. “Or would you rather--? I might let you sleep for a while.”

That wasn’t what he had been going to say. I knew that. For a few seconds, my mind froze, and I couldn’t move at all. Then I swallowed. That hurt. I shook my head minutely and mouthed, ‘Sleep. Please,’ several times. I didn’t want him to offer to stop, to let me go. I might say yes.

I might also say no and mean forever.

If I never asked for it, he wouldn’t, but it was terribly possible that he’d sacrifice the advantages he could get from me as an ally in order to give me that sanctuary.

If Luke had told Merlin, back in college, that he wanted large portions of our family dead, I’m fairly sure that Merlin would have found a way to make that happen. There’d probably have been Ghostwheel anyway, but it would have been a Ghostwheel designed to be a weapon.

Merlin didn’t let me sleep until after he was out of my body. That took a long time. Well, it felt like a long time. I’m not sure if he was trying to prolong the pain or trying not to damage me. He’d gone in pretty damned slowly, too. He always did with that.

When I woke, Merlin was still there, and he still hadn’t given me back my voice. I hurt all over and needed Merlin’s help to the toilet. He helped me shower after that and fucked me up against the wall of the stall while the water sluiced over us. He was relatively gentle about it, but my body was still bruised and aching from what he’d done before.

So I cried because it hurt, but I also wanted it to be worse.

Part of me wanted to be Luke.

*****

Merlin was gentle for several days and gave me a lot of time by myself. Part of me really didn’t want that time, but I needed that long to admit that part of what Luke had that I wanted was the children. I understood why Merlin hadn’t ever asked me, but Luke was so very happy about that part of his life. Only about that bit but still.

And Merlin loved being a parent. He wouldn’t keep having children if he didn’t.

That made everything about what Jasra had done worse. Stealing the possibility for Merlin to be able to love and raise Clayre and Gramble was the deepest wound that she had dealt him. On some level, he knew that giving them to Dara, letting Mandor take them for House Sawall, wasn’t going to be altogether good for those children.

Just better for them than Merlin trying to raise them. 

He’d have done better by them than Deela did by Dalt, but that really wasn’t saying much at all. Both of my parents did better by me than Deela did by Dalt. My father dumped my pregnant mother when he got bored, and my mother killed herself after my birth. That my father had been very young didn’t excuse it. What excused it was that he couldn’t have known what she’d do and that he’d brought her home. A lot of his brothers would have left her in Shadow.

He hadn’t known she was pregnant. Not knowing… _I_ might have left her in Shadow.

No. I wouldn’t have, but that would have been because of Rebma rather than because of being kind.

I also needed the time to understand the difference that being in Merlin’s Ways for a long time would make. I’d known that more time passed for Merlin between our very intense trysts than passed for me, but I hadn’t really understood that viscerally, hadn’t thought about Merlin having so many other things that required his attention and took priority over me.

Merlin had more demands on his time now than he’d had twenty odd years before when he’d decided that he could risk letting me visit his Ways for the first time.

I had no way to track time or to occupy time. If I’d figured out how to ask, Ghostwheel or Ariyus would probably have told me how long it had been and would certainly have been willing to help me stay entertained, but that seemed like cheating. If Merlin wanted me bored and desperate, I would be bored and desperate.

I should have remembered that Luke’s old apartment had been filled with things he could use to occupy time. Those hadn’t really been luxuries, not if Merlin wanted him to retain any scraps of sanity.

*****

Merlin wasn’t quite that brutal with me for a while, but he didn’t release his spell on me for quite a long time, at least a week, possibly two or even three. I couldn’t tell because he kept me locked in a doorless room that wasn’t nearly as nice as where he’d imprisoned Luke. I wasn’t sure if the differences had more to do with him not intending to keep me there long or with him knowing that I’d chosen to be there.

“Are you dreading my visits yet?” Merlin asked the seventh or eighth time he visited. He sounded more morbidly curious than as if he really thought he’d like the answer.

I managed a faint smile and a shrug. Even if I’d been able to speak, I don’t know that I could have explained.

He accepted that then bent me over the bed and fucked me three times. In between, he grew multiple mouths and used them on my back and ass and upper thighs. They weren’t human mouths, more like something out of a horror story-- circular with teeth like needles all the way around. I think there was venom in the bites because they took a lot longer to heal than I expected. Each one felt like a hickey at first and then like he’d torn chunks out of me, but I didn’t bleed, and each bite left a welt rather than a crater.

He hadn’t bound me, so staying in place and allowing him to do what he wanted was all on me. I think it was a test to see if I really wanted what I had told him I did. Not so much that he thought I was lying. We’d had a lot of time for him to know that I hadn’t and wasn’t. He just thought I might realize that I’d made a mistake. He was always wary of that, probably always would be. 

I didn’t want to be able to change my mind, but Merlin needed me to have the option and needed me to take time after we tried something new to be sure that it wasn’t something I wanted to put on my no-never-again list.

And a few things had ended up added to the list. I hadn’t thought anything more would after our first several discussions. I’d lacked imagination.

Lying next to Merlin, after, hurt because pressure made each welt feel as if it had spikes of fire inside. His smile as I shifted, trying to find a comfortable position, told me that he knew.

He put a hand on my throat, and I froze. He hadn’t explicitly said he was done, so he might not be. His lips moved minutely.

Something in my larynx released, and I was almost certain that I could speak again.

“We’re going to talk now,” he told me.

I nodded.

“Being trapped is something you want.”

It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway.

“What does that look like when I’m busy somewhere else?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. My voice was clearer than I’d expected it to be.

I hadn’t ever managed to set aside quite such a long block of time before, so we’d never needed to address the question. Any time when Merlin was busy was either before or after rather than during which was fine because part of each visit was for me being me and reminding the kids that their Uncle Martin loved them. It was also time for Merlin and me to go sailing or try out new spells or fuck in some way that didn’t involve power games.

If I wanted to be Merlin’s fucktoy for months or years, I was going to spend a lot of time alone, and I was going to lose a lot of other parts of our relationship for the duration. We could both expect to live indefinitely, so a few years was nothing.

For us. Not for Gale or Helveh or even for Luke, and Beren was out, exploring Shadow. Za might drop in any time.

“I should have thought,” I said.

He almost laughed. “You were too horny.”

“Pretty much.” I sighed. I wanted to flop over on my back, but I didn’t want the pain that would come from that. “Maybe I should be out and about and you just kidnap me? Out and about in the Ways, I mean.”

“That means either explaining these--” He put a gentle hand on one of my tits. “--or getting rid of them. I don’t think Luke will ask, and Helveh may not remember that you can’t shapeshift, but Gale certainly will.”

Za would. Za absolutely would.

I had a bet with Ariyus that Gale would be the one to let Luke go. Beren had understood enough to feel vulnerable. Gale had the courage to go beyond that. Beren might get there eventually, but I thought zans younger sibling would take care of it first. Ariyus didn’t think any of them would.

Mostly because he never had.

Of course, Ariyus had never been young in quite the same way that a child of the Blood who had just walked the Pattern was. Not that Gale would do it right after walking the Pattern. Za would wait long enough to be sure of being able to make it work, long enough to have established zanself as an adult so that Ghostwheel wouldn’t just snatch Luke back, so that Ariyus wouldn’t tell Merlin the instant it happened.

And I wasn’t going to try to stop zan from doing it. I wasn’t even going to tell Merlin that za might because there wasn’t a way he could stop it, not one he could live with. I was pretty sure that neither of us would even look for Luke. Merlin would want to, of course, but that would mean explaining a lot of things to Gale that he’d been avoiding for years. Za knew him well enough to use that against him.

Za knew me well enough to use it against me, too.

I didn’t regret any of Merlin’s children, but I still wondered what the hell he’d been thinking.

“I don’t know,” I said as I considered Gale and Helveh and awkward questions I certainly wouldn’t want to answer. “It’s… I can’t imagine explaining it to anyone.” Most of our older relatives would find ways to use it against us. They probably couldn’t touch Merlin directly, and I was old enough not to give a damn about words spoken.

Beren on the other hand… Beren would care very much indeed.

Merlin didn’t say anything.

I rolled onto my back and let the needles of fire make a point to my libido. “Helveh would tell Mandor. Hell, Despil might use it to buy zans way back to the Courts and tell Mandor sooner.” Which would make me a lot less useful for protecting Beren on the Chaos end of things. Not because anyone down that way would care about what games we played but rather because I was a vulnerability for someone they’d thought had none.

No, being honest-- A vulnerability for someone _Mandor_ thought had none.

“If we need to wait for the kids to be older--” I said after almost a minute. “If we do, we can. I don’t _want_ to, but that’s different.”

“I could keep you here. Or in a slightly better prison.” He didn’t sound as if he thought that was desirable. He also didn’t sound as if the prospect appalled him. It was something he _could_ do if we both decided we wanted to.

“Would you enjoy that power?”

He laughed. “Probably, but I’m not sure either of us would know when to stop. Also, if I have you for too long...” The last words sounded almost as if he were afraid.

I didn’t let myself turn to look at him. I was pretty sure that, whatever it was, he couldn’t say it while I was looking at him.

“Part of me really does want to watch other people fucking you. Part of me wants… If you were a Shadow dweller, I’d probably let it go on until you died.” He was silent for a moment. “Then I’d go and find another of you and do it again.” 

There was a darkness and a shame in his voice that I hated. I wanted to find it and tear it out so that it wouldn’t hurt him further. Instead, I laughed. “I’ve done worse. You know that.”

“Yeah.” There was another long pause. “Why the hell does that bother me more than it bothers you? You were raised soft.”

“I was raised,” I said, “almost entirely by people who would never-- could never-- be as powerful as I was. It’s a problem all of our kin on that side have. You… You were never the most powerful person in the room. I... never had to worry about what anyone thought until after Dad became King, and that’s only diplomacy.” It was actually after Brand that I began to worry, but mentioning Brand was too close to mentioning Luke.

He didn’t say anything.

We had time to decide about where-- and if-- I would stay and under what circumstances, so I changed the subject. “What appeals to you about people fucking me?” Merlin not bringing anyone else in without asking me had been one of my first limits. I trusted Merlin. That trust didn’t necessarily extend to everyone he trusted.

Ghostwheel didn’t count.

“I like watching you. No matter what you’re doing.” He touched my arm. “I really like watching you suffer, especially if you’re bearing it because I ask.” His fingers ghosted along my skin. “When I’m fucking you, I’ve got part of my attention on me, on how it feels and on not going too far, so I miss part of how you respond. You helpless and utterly wrecked by what’s happening to you-- It’s gorgeous. I want every quiver, every drop of sweat.” 

There was an unfamiliar rawness in his voice, and it took me a moment to understand. This was about him wanting, not about me, not about us. I tried to imagine what it would be like. The times we’d taken the Shadow of me out to be gang raped had been about my fantasies. I swallowed hard. It certainly wouldn’t be anything like that, not in reality.

But… “Either I’m your fucktoy or I’m not.” I could barely get the words out, but I meant them. They terrified me, but I still meant them.

“Martin.” There was command in his voice, so I turned to look at him. He studied my face for several seconds. “You really mean that.”

I nodded. “I’d give you everything forever if you asked for it.” I managed a smile as I rolled onto my side, facing him. I reached up and touched his face. “I like the parts with you when I’m more than that, and I like a lot of other things that aren’t that, but when I’m your fucktoy-- When I am, I’m giving you everything. For then. What you do with it is up to you.” I tried to let my voice convey the depth of my willingness and desire for that state. We both knew I wouldn’t give that to anyone else.

Merlin smiled. “I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may write more of this. I may not. It's not the sort of thing that actually has an ending. I'm labeling it as complete since it's a long PWP. If these two get plot, it'll be in a separate story. If there's more PWP stuff for them, it'll be added here as another chapter or three.


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